Connect with us

Big Marriage Defeat Looms In 2014 (Parts 4 And 5)

Published

on

var addthis_config = {“data_track_addressbar”:true};Parts 4 & 5 in a 7-part investigative series

Republican political operatives are about to give anti-LGBT hate groups just what they crave: a lopsided defeat for gay rights in the deepest South. NCRM’s 7-part investigative series reveals how progress toward marriage equality in other states is threatened by current events in Florida.

Part 4 of 7:  Party Plans

If EMFL’s campaign fails, that will advance two Republican Party goals:  (1) blocking the spread of marriage equality; and (2) attempting to repeal it wherever it exists.

When the first same-gender couples married in 2004, the GOP launched efforts to ban and repeal same-gender civil marriage, everywhere, forever, via the U.S. Constitution, as written on page 10 of the latest Republican Party Platform.  The prior platform said  — with no proof whatsoever — that being raised by two lesbian mothers makes children more likely to become criminals, drop-outs, violent, pregnant, and/or poor.

When the Republican Party wants to run a stealth campaign, it often calls GOP strategist Tim Mooney.

When Utah banned same-gender civil marriage in 2004, it was Tim Mooney who ran that campaign.  After ten years of discrimination, Mooney’s ban was found unconstitutional by a U.S. district court in late 2013, and for 18 days, Utah’s same-gender couples were marrying, until the ruling was stayed pending an appeal.  Also in 2004, Mooney put Ralph Nader on the presidential ballot in several states, which helped put Republican George Bush in the White House because some of Democrat John Kerry’s voters then switched to Nader.  In 2010, Mooney helped elect Republican Rick Perry as governor of Texas by secretly launching a separate, stealth campaign to split liberal votes between a Democratic candidate and a Green Party candidate, which then left Perry with more votes than either of his other two opponents.

On 9 May 2013, around the time that Mooney helped launch EMFL, he spoke at a “Latinos & Conservatism” conference in Las Vegas, where he represented the Faith & Freedom Coalition, an anti-LGBT group where the mission includes repealing and banning marriage nationwide.

In June 2013, Mooney helped launch twin marriage campaigns:  EMFL (Equal Marriage Florida) in the east, and EMAZ (Equal Marriage Arizona) in the west.  Both met with similar suspicion and resistance from the LGBT community.  Two months after he launched EMAZ, its leaders closed the doors.  Seven months after he launched EMFL, its leaders refused to itemize their progress or plans for this article.

In August 2013, Mooney admitted that he was working as a political consultant to marriage equality campaigns — but that he was doing so in order to benefit the Republican Party.  Mooney excused his marriage equality consulting work to fellow conservatives by calling it “the most effective strategy for the future of the GOP” — the party that’s still working to ban and repeal same-gender marriages nationwide.  Like Brito, Gray, and other EMFL leaders, Mooney did not respond to multiple e-mail and phone requests to be interviewed for this article.

On 17 December, Vanessa Brito wrote and recommended contacting Ron Nielson at Our America Initiative, the conservative Libertarian political organization that backs EMFL, and that is named on every EMFL Web page as “Sponsor.”  But it appears that she didn’t want anyone to reach him at all, because she misspelled his name as “Nielsen” and gave a fake, non-existent e-mail address of RTNielsen@NSOinfo.com.  Tracking down the real Ron Nielson was revealing:  he did not want to be quoted anywhere, and would not speak on the record.

Brito’s refusal to answer interview questions, Gray’s refusal to correct the previously published numbers, Mooney’s failure to return inquiries, and Nielson’s refusal to be quoted are all very odd for a statewide campaign in which every signature and every vote matters, and for which any publicity is helpful.  But refusing to talk is not surprising, according to Professor Andrew Koppelman, instructor in law and political science at Northwestern University, who says that not returning reporters’ inquiries is “one of the basic rules of any stealth organization.”

Tim Mooney isn’t the only person associated with EMFL who worked to defeat marriage equality.  EMFL Chairperson/Treasurer Vanessa Brito did, too.  She was the Project Manager & Media Expert for the Hispanic Leadership Fund, a conservative group, where she worked trying to get Mitt Romney elected President of the United States.  During that campaign, Romney publicly signed a written vow to outlaw, repeal, and ban same-gender marriages via the U.S. Constitution.  He was defeated in November 2012.  Seven months later, Brito appointed herself as Chairperson and Treasurer of Equal Marriage Florida.

The only EMFL representative willing to speak on the record is Communications Specialist Joe Hunter from Our America Initiative, which backs EMFL, and is named on every EMFL Web page as “Sponsor.”  Hunter believes that EMFL has made some progress, yet when asked for current figures on staffing, signatures, or fund-raising, he replied, “I really couldn’t answer; I simply don’t know.”

Part 5 of 7:  Haters Wait with Bated Breath

By the 1 February deadline shown on its Web site, EMFL either will succeed at putting the marriage question on Florida’s ballot, or else will fail to put it on the ballot.  All indications are that EMFL will fail.  If the November claim of only 200,000 signatures is accurate, then the remaining 800,000 signatures can’t be collected by the deadline, because there are only three remaining part-time, unpaid district co-chairs who still show working e-mail addresses (no co-chairs show any phone numbers), and each of those three people would have to collect 266,667 more signatures.

That unachievable goal has anti-LGBT hate groups salivating.  As soon as the 1 February deadline is missed, they can start bragging that they just defeated another marriage equality campaign, without lifting a finger.

For LGBT activists, though, staying off the Florida ballot is far safer than getting on it.  If marriage equality appears on either a 2014 or a 2016 ballot, anti-LGBT hate groups nationwide will unleash their usual dragons, fueled and funded by Mormon churchgoers, Catholic bishops, evangelical Dominionists, and NOM’s tiny handful of wealthy, secret donors.  Those groups flooded over $40 million into California’s Proposition 8 battle only 6 years ago, and they’re just itching to repeat themselves.  Florida would make a great showcase for an encore performance.

Meanwhile, EMFL filed Florida campaign finance reports showing that it has collected none of the $6 million that it promised to raise.  To make matters worse, $6 million is probably inadequate.  Brito sells campaign services, marked up to give herself a profit, so her estimated budget is probably too small to:  (a) change cultural attitudes, (b) saturate Florida’s ten media markets, and (c) fight wealthy Mormon and Catholic bishops (whose funds for oppressing LGBT people appear relatively unlimited).

In 2008, although the LGBT community raised $4.3 million to fight Florida’s constitutional marriage ban, anti-equality forces raised only $1.6 million, and yet they won by a 24% landslide.  In Oregon, where the population is about one-fifth of Florida’s, campaign leaders have budgeted $10-12 million, and in Georgia, with half the population of Florida, Georgia
Equality leaders also expect to spend $10 million.  All these data point to two realities for EMFL:  changing cultural attitudes is the critical goal, and EMFL’s $6 million budget is too small to achieve that goal.

Six years ago, Floridians voted, 62% to 38%, against equality.  To reverse that to at least 60% to 40% favoring equality (the minimum needed to pass), any campaign would have to focus resources on changing votes.  Among Florida’s 16 million potential voters, the most labor-intensive are the 7 million who are all over age 50, mostly Republican, and who stridently want to keep the current marriage ban.  Collecting signatures is pointless unless EMFL also persuades nearly 2 million citizens to switch their vote from anti-equality to pro-equality.

Asked how those voters will get converted, OAI spokesman and EMFL Sponsor Joe Hunter says he doesn’t think it’s necessary to change cultural attitudes, and EMFL doesn’t plan to work on that.  “It is close enough.  We don’t have to change a whole bunch of minds.  There are enough people in Florida who are sympathetic to marriage equality to pass it; the challenge is making sure they go vote,” he said.  When asked how OAI and EMFL can be so sure of victory, Hunter replied, “We have done our own polling, and the conclusion is it is not a slam dunk, but we’re certainly in a position to get there.”

Neither OAI nor EMFL is willing to release any of their private poll results, and when asked which public polls convinced OAI to sponsor EMFL, Hunter could not immediately identify any.

Three days later, he did point to three surveys from a newspaper, a university, and a surveyor, but none of those polls suggested that at least 60% of the voters would agree to alter the state constitution.  In October 2012, when the Washington Post asked 1,107 adult registered Florida voters whether same-gender couples should be able to marry, 54% said yes, 33% said no, and 13% had no opinion.  In December 2012, when Quinnipiac University asked 1,261 registered Florida voters the same question, only 43% said yes, and every age group 30 and older fell far short of the critical 60% minimum.  In August 2013, when St. Pete Polls asked 3,034 registered Florida voters (demographically balanced by district, party, race, and age) the same question, only 46% said yes, 47% said no, 7% were unsure, and no age group had the required 60% minimum.

Vanessa Brito says she earned a Ph.D. in Political Science from Florida International University, a curriculum which should have taught her about the need to persuade critical demographic groups.  Apparently it didn’t.  Rather than concentrate on the anti-equality voters, she is focusing instead on Libertarians, moderate Republicans, and the least important group of all:  younger voters, “the people in their 30s, the voters in their 30s” as she told the Miami Herald last June.  The signatures of 30-somethings might put equal marriage on the ballot and win that battle, but ignoring their 7 million Republican parents and grandparents will also defeat equality at the polls, and thus lose the whole war.

In this populous, media-centric state, that’s a defeat which conservatives will crow about for years — and which will help raise more anti-LGBT cash — to the detriment of marriage rights everywhere else.

If EMFL gets the marriage equality question onto any ballot, Floridians — not to mention the rest of the nation — will then suffer through another bitter, vicious campaign in which billboards and broadcasts call LGBT people defective, deviant, depraved, and demonically possessed.  While that campaign rages in this southernmost state, teenagers who are LGBT or who have same-gender parents are likely to be brutalized, and children from all age groups will be victims of the prejudice for which America’s deep-south theocrats are so famous.

Either way, EMFL now is poised to hand the anti-LGBT forces exactly what they want:  a wide victory, in an election year, in a big state.  That victory will come either via EMFL’s failure to collect enough petition signatures, or else via a Proposition-8-style media battle — in which opponents relentlessly advertise that LGBT individuals, couples, and their children don’t even deserve basic human rights — followed by a defeat at the polls.

Tomorrow in this investigative series:  Part 6 – Promising the Impossible, and Part 7 – Prognosis.

skitched-20130320-084004Ned Flaherty is an LGBT activist currently focused on civil marriage equality, and previously on Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell repeal. He writes from Boston, Massachusetts, where America’s first same-gender civil marriages began in 2004. He suffered a childhood exposure to Roman Catholic pomp and circumstance, but the spell never took, and he recovered.

Related Topics:
Continue Reading
Click to comment
 
 

Enjoy this piece?

… then let us make a small request. The New Civil Rights Movement depends on readers like you to meet our ongoing expenses and continue producing quality progressive journalism. Three Silicon Valley giants consume 70 percent of all online advertising dollars, so we need your help to continue doing what we do.

NCRM is independent. You won’t find mainstream media bias here. From unflinching coverage of religious extremism, to spotlighting efforts to roll back our rights, NCRM continues to speak truth to power. America needs independent voices like NCRM to be sure no one is forgotten.

Every reader contribution, whatever the amount, makes a tremendous difference. Help ensure NCRM remains independent long into the future. Support progressive journalism with a one-time contribution to NCRM, or click here to become a subscriber. Thank you. Click here to donate by check.

News

‘What Fascism Looks Like’: Bondi’s War on Judiciary Is ‘Red Line’ for Democrats

Published

17 hours ago

on

April 25, 2025

By

House and Senate Democrats are drawing a red line after agents from President Donald Trump’s FBI arrested a sitting judge—whom Attorney General Pam Bondi suggested is “deranged” and implied believes she is “above the law.”

Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Hannah Dugan is “accused of escorting the man and his lawyer out of her courtroom through the jury door last week after learning that immigration authorities were seeking his arrest,” according to the Associated Press. “FBI Director Kash Patel said Dugan ‘increased danger to the public’ by letting Mexico native Eduardo Flores-Ruiz and his lawyer leave her courtroom through a jury door April 18 to help avert his arrest, according to an FBI affidavit.”

Shaking her head, Attorney General Bondi, a frequent Fox News guest, hours after the arrest on Friday said (video below): “What’s happened to our judiciary is beyond me.”

Asked what motivates these “once upstanding people in their communities and their professions” to “put it all on the line for this,” Bondi responded, “They’re deranged.”

“I cannot believe—I think some of these judges think they are beyond and above the law, and they are not,” she continued. “And we’re sending a very strong message today, if you are harboring a fugitive, we don’t care who you are , if you are helping hide one, if you are giving a TdA member guns, anyone who is illegally in this country, we will come after you, and we will prosecute you. We will find you.”

READ MORE: ‘Pure, Unadulterated, Evil’: Trump Envoy’s Putin Meeting Triggers Outrage

“Crucially,” The New Republic noted, Judge Dugan “is not accused of supplying a member of Tren de Aragua with guns. She is charged with two federal counts of obstruction, one for concealing a person from discovery and arrest, and another for obstruction of federal government proceedings.”

“Bondi, who has been a fierce defender of the president’s immigration agenda—including its wrongful deportation of immigrants—has now taken up the mantle of antagonizing state and federal judges on behalf of the increasingly hostile executive branch,” TNR added.

The New Yorker’s Susan Glasser, commenting on Bondi’s remarks, wrote simply: “AG Declares War on ‘Deranged’ Judiciary. #2025”

“The fact that she’s connecting this to the broader judiciary is the most striking thing here,” observed Washington Post senior political reporter Aaron Blake, who called it “a significant escalation of the administration’s efforts.”

Democrats are calling it something else: fascism.

“This is not normal,” wrote U.S. Senator Amy Klobuchar (D-MN). “The Administration’s arrest of a sitting judge in Wisconsin is a drastic move that threatens the rule of law. While we don’t have all the details, this is a grave step and undermines our system of checks and balances.”

“Pam Bondi is not the President’s personal lawyer and DOJ is not a cudgel to target whoever the President doesn’t like,” wrote U.S. Senator Patty Murray (D-WA). “This is a democracy and We The People will not let this President trample over our constitution. I’m not afraid of Donald Trump and you shouldn’t be either.”

“There are no kings in America,” Senate Democratic Minority Leader Chuck Schumer declared. “Trump and Bondi can’t just decide to arrest sitting judges at will and threaten judges into submission. This is a dangerous escalation, an attack on the separation of powers, and we will fight this with everything we have.”

“First, Trump ignored the Supreme Court,” said U.S. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D-MA). “Now, his FBI arrested a judge. This administration is threatening our country’s judicial system. This rings serious alarm bells.”

“Understand what this is: If Kash Patel and Donald Trump don’t like a judge, they think they can arrest them,” wrote U.S. Senator Tina Smith (D-MN). “This is stunning — we must stand up to this blatant power grab. Republicans: How is this not a red line for you?”

“They arrested a judge?! They can no longer claim to be a party of law and order,” wrote U.S. Rep. Greg Landsman (D-OH). “This will have to be a red line for congressional Republicans. Unbelievable.”

“In the United States, we have a system of checks and balances and separations of power for damn good reasons,” U.S. Senator Tammy Baldwin of Wisconsin, said in a statement. “The president’s administration arresting a sitting judge is a gravely serious and drastic move, and it threatens to breach those very separations of power. Make no mistake, we do not have kings in this country, and we are a democracy governed by laws that everyone must abide by. By relentlessly attacking the judicial system, flouting court orders, and arresting a sitting judge, this president is putting those basic Democratic values that Wisconsinites hold dear on the line.”

READ MORE: ‘Reeks of Eugenics’: RFK Jr.’s Autism ‘Registry’ Draws Nazi Germany Comparisons

“This is what fascism looks like,” wrote U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen (D-MD). “Attorney General Bondi threatening judges she claims are not cooperating with Trump immigration policies and saying ‘we will come after you and we will prosecute you. We will find you.’”

U.S. Senator Andy Kim (D-NJ) wrote: “Kash Patel has long bragged about using acts of intimidation as FBI Director to appease Donald Trump. This extreme use of federal law enforcement is another example of this intimidation being used to stoke fear in immigrant communities and create chaos in our legal system.”

U.S. Rep. Jamie Raskin (D-MD), a former constitutional law professor, issued this statement:

“Americans are watching with outrage the stunning news that Trump’s FBI has arrested a sitting judge in Milwaukee for alleged obstruction of an immigration arrest. While all the facts are not yet in, the implications of this arrest are chilling. This is a drastic escalation and dangerous new front in Trump’s authoritarian campaign of trying to bully, intimidate, and impeach judges who won’t follow his dictates. We must do whatever we can to defend the independent judiciary in America.

“As Judge Wilkinson, a conservative Reagan appointee to the Fourth Circuit reminded us last week, this Administration has shown brazen contempt for the judiciary. They are flouting court orders on a daily basis and trying to impeach judges who have entered injunctions against their lawlessness. This contempt for the judicial function is now being weaponized, with the Administration literally arresting a judge over alleged defiance.

“Every American should be deeply troubled by this massive escalation, and Judiciary Democrats are standing strong for judicial independence. This is an unmistakable descent further into authoritarian chaos.”

Watch the video of Attorney General Bondi below or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Incompetent. Irresponsible. Negligent’: Calls Mount for Hegseth’s Ouster or Prosecution

 

Image via Reuters

 

Continue Reading

News

‘Pure, Unadulterated, Evil’: Trump Envoy’s Putin Meeting Triggers Outrage

Published

20 hours ago

on

April 25, 2025

By

Political, foreign policy, and national security experts are expressing shock and outrage after President Donald Trump’s special envoy, real estate billionaire Steve Witkoff, met with Vladimir Putin on Friday at the Kremlin for the fourth time—entirely unaccompanied by any senior State Department officials, administration representatives, or policy experts—reportedly to discuss ending Russia’s unlawful war against the sovereign nation of Ukraine.

The Financial Times on Friday reported that critics describe Witkoff “as an innocent abroad, unskilled and unlettered in diplomacy. His fans say experience is overrated.”

“Being relatively uninformed about the issues, [Witkoff] took on board everything that a very charming Vladimir Putin told him,” former U.S. ambassador to Ukraine Steven Pifer told FT. Witkoff has “fallen into a trap,” Pifer also said, describing the Trump administration’s proposal to end Putin’s war against Ukraine as “blatantly pro-Russian.”

FT also notes that Ukraine has “long suspected Witkoff of pro-Russian sympathies.”

On Friday, FT’s Moscow bureau chief Max Seddon posted video of a smiling President Putin warmly greeting Witkoff, “in English, in the Kremlin.”

READ MORE: Marjorie Taylor Greene Tops List of Ultra MAGA Hardliners Pursuing Promotions — and Power

“Putin,” Seddon noted, “is flanked by his top foreign policy advisor Yuri Ushakov and Kirill Dmitriev, head of Russia’s sovereign wealth fund.”

Witkoff, as numerous experts pointed out, was accompanied by no one except an interpreter.

“Their side is helmed by a former KGB officer who’s negotiated with every U.S. President since Bill Clinton, along with his most trusted, experienced foreign policy and economic aides,” noted diplomat, political advisor, and former intelligence officer Ned Price. “Our side consists of a Manhattan real estate developer and his interpreter. What could go wrong?”

CNN Chief National Security Correspondent Alex Marquardt appeared to echo Price’s concerns.

“Yet again, Witkoff meets with Putin with no other senior US officials. While Putin has two of his closest aides. This is the 4th Witkoff-Putin meeting this year and Witkoff doesn’t appear to have taken a senior diplomat/intel/expert with him to any of them.”

Former Obama National Security Council official Tommy Vietor concurred, adding, “seems like quite a bad idea that someone as inexperienced as Witkoff takes these meetings with no staff present.”

But it was Fox News’ Chief National Security Correspondent Jennifer Griffin who blasted the Trump administration:

“Where are the subject matter experts with Witkoff? Putin, the KGB officer, is laughing,” Griffin noted. “Meanwhile the instability at the Pentagon is not helping project strength during these delicate negotiations. There is still no confirmed NSA [National Security Agency] (Cyber Command) director after Defense Secretary Hegseth fired Gen Hauck and his deputy for no reason, not even a nominee yet for the person overseeing the crown jewel of US intelligence and SIGINT, which might come into handy when you are negotiating with Putin and Xi.”

Meanwhile, historian Mike Coté, responding to the video, lamented, “By the end of this, we’re going to have ceded Alaska back to Russia.”

Christopher Steele, the British former intelligence officer and Russia expert, on Thursday had warned: “It’s hard to imagine a more dangerous approach to Moscow than that being pursued by Trump/Witkoff. Putin’s a murderous thug with imperial ambitions and totally untrustworthy. By selling out Ukraine, Trump will simply encourage further Russian aggression rather than secure peace.”

Paula Chertok, who writes about Russia and Ukraine at East/West Blog, responded to video of Witkoff walking on the streets of Moscow with his Russian friends.

“Witkoff is shopping in Moscow with Putin’s pals… while Ukraine is observing a Day of Mourning for Ukrainians massacred in Kyiv by Russia,” Chertok noted.

READ MORE: ‘Reeks of Eugenics’: RFK Jr.’s Autism ‘Registry’ Draws Nazi Germany Comparisons

Foreign policy expert and journalist Laura Rozen, added: “Looks like Witkoff with his girlfriend, and Dmitriev with his wife, strolling around Moscow with bodyguards.”

Veteran journalist and author Craig Unger, who has alleged President Trump is a Russian asset, accused him on Thursday of “throwing Ukraine under the bus so he can build Trump Tower Moscow. Witkoff has no experience in diplomacy but plenty when it comes to real estate.”

John Hardie, the Deputy Director of the Russia Program at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD), a non-partisan institution focusing on national security and foreign policy, also posted those videos.

Republican former U.S. Rep. Adam Kinzinger responded, writing: “I absolutely am ashamed of my government today. This is pure, unadulterated, evil.”

Watch the videos above or at this link.

READ MORE: ‘Incompetent. Irresponsible. Negligent’: Calls Mount for Hegseth’s Ouster or Prosecution

 

Image via Reuters

Continue Reading

News

Marjorie Taylor Greene Tops List of Ultra MAGA Hardliners Pursuing Promotions — and Power

Published

23 hours ago

on

April 25, 2025

By

President Donald Trump’s top loyalists are angling to climb the political ladder to help secure the future for his ultra-MAGA movement—and position themselves for greater influence. House members like far-right U.S. Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene (R-GA) are looking at the U.S. Senate, and far-right U.S. senators like Tommy Tuberville (R-AL) and Marsha Blackburn (R-TN) reportedly see hope in governors’ mansions.

Some critical U.S. senators on both sides of the aisle are retiring, like Republican former Majority and Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky, and the second-highest-ranking Democrat senator, Dick Durbin of Illinois.

“Democrats anxious to deny Donald Trump and his Republican Party a governing trifecta as soon as possible are feeling pretty good about their prospects for flipping the House in 2026, given the GOP’s fragile margin of control and the historical pattern of sizable midterm losses for the president’s party,” New York magazine’s “Intelligencer” reported last month.

“But the Senate, which has the power to confirm Trump’s executive branch and judicial nominations, is really going to be a reach. Democrats would need to flip four Senate seats to win control of the chamber. And an already difficult landscape is being made even tougher by the retirements of Democratic incumbents Gary Peters of Michigan, Tina Smith of Minnesota, and now Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire. All three of these open seats could potentially trigger competitive races in 2026.”

READ MORE: ‘Reeks of Eugenics’: RFK Jr.’s Autism ‘Registry’ Draws Nazi Germany Comparisons

Enter Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene, the Georgia Republican who went from a freshman stripped of all of her committee assignments over incendiary language, to becoming chair of the Delivering on Government Efficiency (D.O.G.E.) subcommittee. She also sits on the House Committee on Homeland Security.

Congresswoman Greene is now thinking about becoming Senator Greene. If successful, her controversial tactics could have a dramatic impact on what is supposed to be the “world’s greatest deliberative body.”

Rep. Greene is reportedly eyeing a run to unseat Democratic U.S. Senator Jon Ossoff, and believes she would “crush” any GOP primary opponent—except Governor Brian Kemp, should he choose to enter the race—according to the right-wing website Daily Caller.

“Republicans are laser-focused on defeating Ossoff, whose narrow victory over former Republican Georgia Sen. David Perdue in a January 2021 runoff election was partly responsible for costing Senate Republicans their majority during the 2020 cycle,” Daily Caller notes, adding, “Ossoff is the only Senate Democrat running for reelection in a state that Trump won last November.”

Could Greene beat Ossoff?

READ MORE: Trump’s SignalGate Sit-Down Mocked as a ‘Him in a Nutshell’ Moment

“This would be a dream for Dems in Georgia,” should Greene run, observed veteran journalist Lydia Polgreen.

“Somewhere at the DSCC [Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee] some operative is frantically wondering if there is anything they can do to ensure this happens,” wrote University of Pennsylvania political and media historian Brian Rosenwald.

A Daily Caller source also suggested Ossoff would retain his Senate seat, especially should the election move into a runoff. And Ossoff “has been taunting Greene to jump into the race.”

Meanwhile, U.S. Senator Tommy Tuberville is reportedly mapping out a run for the Alabama Governor’s mansion.

“Tuberville told a group of donors at a private event on Wednesday night that his mind is officially made up,” the conservative website Yellowhammer News reported. “Rather than seeking re-election to the U.S. Senate, he is ready to run his next race in Alabama, and serve the people of the state in Montgomery instead of Washington.
An official campaign announcement is imminent in the coming weeks, but latest reports offer insight into a finalized decision by Tuberville, who has been privately discussing jumping into the 2026 gubernatorial race for quite some time.”

Senator Tuberville reportedly is “furious” at the leak, according to an opinion column at Alabama Political Reporter.

“Tuberville melted down like a plastic lawn chair in July. By Thursday morning, the whispers had turned into headlines. Then Tuberville took to Facebook — and things got weird.”

“While I appreciate all the interest,” Tuberville wrote, “Suzanne and I are still praying about how to best serve the people of Alabama. When I have an official announcement about my future, you’ll hear it directly from me.”

U.S. Senator Marsha Blackburn, a top “Trump loyalist,” is “strongly looking” at a run for the Tennessee governor’s mansion.

The Tennessean reports that “early polling suggests she would likely be the Republican frontrunner. Some politicos across the state consider her success a foregone conclusion: at a Tennessee Chamber of Commerce event in January, attendees called her ‘Gov. Blackburn.'”

And U.S. Rep. Jim Comer (R-KY), the chair of the powerful House Oversight Committee, has also said he would be interested in running for governor.

READ MORE: ‘Incompetent. Irresponsible. Negligent’: Calls Mount for Hegseth’s Ouster or Prosecution

 

Image via Shutterstock

Continue Reading

Trending

Copyright © 2020 AlterNet Media.